Monday, November 21, 2011

living in subrbia



these are some of the several short videos i did for the landscape as beaurocracy project. it was much fun doing moving images.



a little about the project: landscape as bureaucracy is an exploration of the underlying structures surrounding the dream of owning a house in xxi century mexico. for the past 3 years i have documented several aspects of this constructed dream; the public institutions involved in the acquisition of houses in mexico (infonavit), the people´s pursuit for their mortgage loan, the bureaucrats who demand requisites and decide who gets or not awarded a loan, and the private companies and their merchandising strategies to lure people into debt. in between all of this, stands the case of my older brother david, who for the past 8 years has been pursuing a loan for a house through all of the above parties. symbolically, it is the power and conviction of people’s dreams; both of the soon to be homeowners and of the public and private bureaucrats that pushes the natural landscape to become an urban and suburban space. it seems to me, that landscape as an idea is as much the actual scenario as it is the social, political and economical forces that conform and eventually transform it.